In November last year, President Nicolas Sarkozy's government launched "the great national identity debate". Since then, thousands have attended town hall meetings throughout France's provinces and an official website dedicated to the purpose has received hundreds of thousands of hits . Eric Besson, minister for immigration, national identity, integration and co-development, claims this is confirmation that the initiative has been a resounding success. However, virulent criticism from the left that the debate is divisive, repeated demands from various quarters to put an end to this dangerous exercise and misgivings on the right in recent weeks offer a quite different picture.

The website contains a broad range of contributions, excerpts and citations from various statements made by personalities, hundreds of carefully selected articles and declarations, as well as a "recommended" reading list that provides a strong indication as to the pillars upon which the debate must rest.

We all know that the way in which a question is asked, and the context and the presuppositions that are made, often determine the response. One must therefore pay careful attention to the various speeches and statements that have been made by the minister, his colleagues and those deputies who back the government, and analyse the various references he proposes. Responses posted by internet users or others who have participated in the debate stand to have very little impact since the dice are loaded and the answers have been predetermined: the French must honour France, its flag, its great men, its national anthem, its glorious past, and embrace values of generosity and open-mindedness. In other words, what we find is a return to a nationalism of symbols, a narrow-minded and exclusionary model, one which of course will fail to attend to the most pressing contemporary questions.

One might have expected to find a broad range of references on the website that would have opened up the debate, given that scholars in France and elsewhere have written extensively on nationalism, colonialism, immigration and slavery. Likewise, no references are included to those communities residing in French overseas departments or territories or in underprivileged banlieues housing projects who have had much to say on these questions in recent years. Are we to assume that the minister considers such contributions without interest?

Instead, the impression one gets from the information uploaded to the website is that no debate, thinking or analysis has taken place in France on these questions over the past 20 years and that it is sufficient to peruse a carefully selected corpus of works in order to understand these complex questions. Hidden behind this "debate on national identity" lies another one that has to do with France's colonial history and its legacy, and the unspoken question is not "What is it to be French?", but rather: "Can one be black, Arab, Asian, or from a French overseas department or territory and be French?" But, the message is all too clear: let's stay away from these ticklish subjects and focus instead on the original principles of the nation's "founding fathers", updated in this instance by the zealous guardians of national pride.

Immigrants and their children (grandchildren even) provide the backdrop to this debate. And we're not just talking about any immigrant here; the most "coloured", the "inheritors" of colonies, the most fervent advocates of "ethnic factionalism", and those who refuse to assimilate. In other words, "those who don't love France", who are heard booing the national anthem or demonstrate in the streets when Algeria qualifies for the World Cup, cause havoc in the banlieues, destroy the economy in "our" exotic overseas paradises, and seek to diversify the "ethnic" and religious profile of the republic. The same people who are weakening "our" soul, our "essence" and who force their women to wear the burqa.

Ignoring, worse even, stigmatising these components of French society means that the debate on identity is flawed from the outset. In its quest for a national essence, it excludes from the "national" realm precisely those differences that are the hallmark of our globalised society and of its continual creolisation. Rather than advancing thinking, Besson's initiative offers an opportunity to steal the thunder from a shaky extreme right on the eve of a strategic election, at the midway point of the president's term in office.

What options are available to us when it comes to reacting to this identitarian tsunami launched by Besson with Sarkozy's endorsement? Given the degree to which the debate is calculated and the conclusions predictable, we could simply ignore it and refuse to participate. But this would leave our fellow citizens alone before the governmental machine.

So we have decided to act and in the months to come, we will engage in a relentless campaign aimed at steering reflection towards other issues while also offering concrete tools that promise to assist French people in reaching a better level of understanding. In the first instance, we need to go back to basics and actually attempt to understand history. Most people are unaware of the history of slavery and colonialism and the history of immigration from the global south to France. We believe these initiatives will ensure a different kind of participation by citizens in a "genuine debate", and that when knowledge of this history exceeds the realm of phantasms it will no longer be the subject of "debate".

The time has come to finally enter the postcolonial era and abandon hollow debates pertaining to the decline of French "national identity". A society that silences its past, marginalises segments of its history and leaves so many episodes unexplained will be incapable of confronting reality, and can only ultimately find itself in crisis when it considers the concept of "identity" in the singular. Now that we have commemorated the fall of the Berlin Wall, the time is right to tear down another, namely the one erected in our collective imagination and which, as far as populations from the global south or from French overseas departments and territories are concerned, has yet to be dismantled. This remains one of the most important challenges confronting our generation and we must face up to this responsibility in order to preempt further crises in our overseas and banlieues communities. So yes, one has to pick one's debate, but not the one on "national identity"; rather that which concerns the very manner in which our collective identities, shared and Republican values are built, today, in postcolonial France, some 50 years since African independence.